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OACapture will not control certain cameras on RPI version


Stuart1971

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Hi,

I know the Author of this software uses this forum, but could not remember who...there is an issue with the RPI version on Astroberry not working with QHY or Altair cameras, is this a known issue or a glitch ? .. 👍🏼

Edited by Stuart1971
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1 hour ago, JamesF said:

Or just post here if you wish and I will see what I can do to help.

James


Thanks James....appreciate your time on this.. 👍🏼

I have tried my QHY5 and an Altair camera and neither of them will be recognised, yet they both work in INdI on the RPI......have yet to try my Lodestars and see if they work....

 

Edited by Stuart1971
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It is, though I don't know if it's the package I build or if Radek built his own, so there may be differences.  One option may be to install my build over the top of the default Astroberry one (assuming mine does work as at the moment I can't recall which cameras I tested on the RPi other than the actual RPi cameras), but that's definitely getting towards a last resort.

Perhaps I should download a copy of Astroberry and give that a whirl as well.  That'll have to wait for another day though as 3.6GB will take hours to download and my wife has bagsed our bandwidth tonight for an Android update on her phone :(

Is the QHY5 the original model?  If so I'm surprised it doesn't see that as I wrote my own driver for that camera and assuming it has connected ok then there are no other library dependencies or anything like that.

James

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1 hour ago, JamesF said:

It is, though I don't know if it's the package I build or if Radek built his own, so there may be differences.  One option may be to install my build over the top of the default Astroberry one (assuming mine does work as at the moment I can't recall which cameras I tested on the RPi other than the actual RPi cameras), but that's definitely getting towards a last resort.

Perhaps I should download a copy of Astroberry and give that a whirl as well.  That'll have to wait for another day though as 3.6GB will take hours to download and my wife has bagsed our bandwidth tonight for an Android update on her phone :(

Is the QHY5 the original model?  If so I'm surprised it doesn't see that as I wrote my own driver for that camera and assuming it has connected ok then there are no other library dependencies or anything like that.

James

Yes, the original QHY5 and also an Altair GPCAM, both the cameras work in Astroberry with Ekos....downloading a copy would be a good idea I guess, as you will see the issues we are facing...

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Still working on this.  I now have Astroberry downloaded and a suitable SD card, so hopefully I'm now in a position to test it all.

Oddly though, I have found a post from someone using Astroberry and oacapture 1.8.0 with the Orion version of the QHY5 and it works for them, so there may be something more subtle going on.  We'll see, anyhow.

James

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Ok, here are the results of my initial investigation with the QHY5 and Astroberry (2.0.3, fully updated):

Both the QHY and my own drivers see the camera as present (the camera shows up in the dropdown twice, once for QHYCCD -- theirs, and once for QHY -- mine).  The QHYCCD driver fails to connect to the camera.  This is a bug in my interface to their drivers.  My own driver appears to work when testing on the bench.

I've fixed the QHYCCD bug in my development code, but the camera still doesn't work.  I believe that may be down to a bug in QHY's SDK because it says the camera supports live video (as opposed to single frame captures) and then throws an error when I attempt to enable live video.  However, I will investigate in more detail and then take it up with QHY if that does look to be the case.  I believe INDI uses single frame captures by default which is perhaps why it doesn't run into the same problem.

I'll see what I can find out with an Altair camera later.

James

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24 minutes ago, JamesF said:

Ok, here are the results of my initial investigation with the QHY5 and Astroberry (2.0.3, fully updated):

Both the QHY and my own drivers see the camera as present (the camera shows up in the dropdown twice, once for QHYCCD -- theirs, and once for QHY -- mine).  The QHYCCD driver fails to connect to the camera.  This is a bug in my interface to their drivers.  My own driver appears to work when testing on the bench.

I've fixed the QHYCCD bug in my development code, but the camera still doesn't work.  I believe that may be down to a bug in QHY's SDK because it says the camera supports live video (as opposed to single frame captures) and then throws an error when I attempt to enable live video.  However, I will investigate in more detail and then take it up with QHY if that does look to be the case.  I believe INDI uses single frame captures by default which is perhaps why it doesn't run into the same problem.

I'll see what I can find out with an Altair camera later.

James

Ok, many thanks 😀😀

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I've just tried an Altair camera (GPCAM AR130C) and another camera which is also made by Touptek and is basically the same as the GPCAM AR130C, to the point where the Altair SDK recognises it as such.

On my (Intel) development machine oacapture sees both cameras.  When I tested on the RPi running Astroberry it didn't see the genuine Altair camera, but recognised the other.  This is a confusing result if the Altair camera works under INDI because both are using the same SDK library to find the cameras.

I'll rebuild oacapture from source on the Astroberry machine (assuming that's practical) and see what I can find out.

James

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8 hours ago, JamesF said:

I've just tried an Altair camera (GPCAM AR130C) and another camera which is also made by Touptek and is basically the same as the GPCAM AR130C, to the point where the Altair SDK recognises it as such.

On my (Intel) development machine oacapture sees both cameras.  When I tested on the RPi running Astroberry it didn't see the genuine Altair camera, but recognised the other.  This is a confusing result if the Altair camera works under INDI because both are using the same SDK library to find the cameras.

I'll rebuild oacapture from source on the Astroberry machine (assuming that's practical) and see what I can find out.

James

It was a genuine Altair camera that I was trying to use...GPCAM 130 mono.. 👍🏼

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Well, I'm at a loss to explain what's going on with the Altair camera at the moment.  When oacapture calls the Altair SDK to find out how many cameras are connected, it returns none.  That's the same way that INDI finds out if there are cameras connected, so I can't see how it can work in one and not the other.  I think I'm going to have to sit on this one for a while to see if anything helpful occurs to me.

It might be helpful if you could paste the output of the following two commands (run from a terminal window) on the RPi:

dpkg-query -l libaltaircam

lsusb

(The latter with the camera plugged in.)

James

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  • 2 months later...
11 hours ago, deepspace said:

Hi, 

I have the same problem with altair astro 178C ..

 

output from Rpi4 ..

image.png.6daa4a1808c49513a75f449a85fd3ed1.png

 

Martin

Ah, I can see what the problem is there.  Some of the camera manufacturers have been rather casual with their use of USB Vendor IDs.  The Altair camera is actually the first device in the output of lsusb.  I wonder if "MCS" actually originally meant "Mallincam Sky".

Anyhow, as a temporary workaround you could try adding this line to the end of /lib/udev/rules.d/70-altair-cameras.rules:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="16d0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0d80", TAG+="uaccess"

You'll need to reboot or run "udevadm control --reload-rules" as root and then reconnect the camera after making the change.

James

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On 14/03/2021 at 11:16, JamesF said:

Ah, I can see what the problem is there.  Some of the camera manufacturers have been rather casual with their use of USB Vendor IDs.  The Altair camera is actually the first device in the output of lsusb.  I wonder if "MCS" actually originally meant "Mallincam Sky".

Anyhow, as a temporary workaround you could try adding this line to the end of /lib/udev/rules.d/70-altair-cameras.rules:


SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="16d0", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0d80", TAG+="uaccess"

You'll need to reboot or run "udevadm control --reload-rules" as root and then reconnect the camera after making the change.

James

I am trying to get my Altair GP0130 working as well and I cannot see the file 70-altair etc.  Am I missing something or do I need to add it?  Thanks for your help

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You either need all the packages from INDI installed (in theory oacapture should just use those if they're present) or to install the libaltaircam package that I provide (from the same place as the oacapture package).  The rules file is not always called exactly the same name unfortunately, but if you have INDI installed or libaltaircam then it should be present somewhere on your system.

If you do have one of the two installed then the output of lsusb would be useful.

There are some Altair cameras that are no longer supported, but I'm not aware that the GP0130 is one of those.  I did bodge a workaround for at least one of the affected cameras by patching Altair's library at execution time which certainly means the god of software engineering won't be letting me into heaven when the time comes.  It's possible I might need to check that still works if you're using an RPi and have an affected camera.

James

Edited by JamesF
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@JamesF - thank you.  I will have a rummage.  Linux is not my strong point I am afraid.  I just installed the whole of Astroberry and regularly run the updates but cannot really tell you much more than that.  The camera is recognised and works with EKOS and PHD for plate solving and guiding - I know that much :) .  I will have a hunt around for the library you mention and try and get that installed.

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